Выдержки из истории сумки

 (цитируется по «ETYMOLOGIA TOTALLIA», том “S”)

It is well-known that in the thriving times of the Roman empire any one (well, any one brave enough) could travel the Roman domain unmolested merely by claiming roman citizenship. In particular, saying “Civis romanus sum” was reported to be sufficient. Those in favour of such manners were referred to as SUMians, thus the bags they had were named SUMKAs.

Further on, Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum” gave birth to another generations of SUMians, although those are more widely known as NEO-SUMians. However, SUMKAs were still thus called.

All those centuries before any NEO-Sumians or even romans, the Sumero-Akkadians used SUMKAs to carry masons’ instruments in; the name Sumer – actually a contraction on SUM-Ka MEr – “a mason with a bag”.

In medieval Europe SUMKA was widely used as a wallet to keep French coins, sous, in.

Medieval Russians, in their turn, used large pieces of leather to protect they massive silver monetary units from nasty weather and occasional looks. Leather was folded, to which corresponds a Russian verbal root SU, meaning “fold twice”. So SUMKA was just a name fro a lot of leather around Russian finances.